President Trump and Joe Biden are statistically tied in Georgia, with the 2020 Democratic challenger a single percentage point ahead of the incumbent.
In a new Civiqs poll for the left-wing website Daily Kos, Biden leads with 48% support to Trump’s 47%, boosted by a roughly 30-point and 10-point advantage with surveyed registered urban and suburban voters, respectively. Trump, however, wallops Biden among rural Georgians by 40 points.
Trump’s appeal to urban and rural voters is on par with 2016. But Biden’s popularity with those in the suburbs has upended the race in what’s becoming a battleground state ahead of November’s general election. While Trump won the suburban demographic against Hillary Clinton last cycle, 51% to 46%, he now trails Biden 52% to 43%, according to Tuesday’s poll. Biden builds on Clinton’s performance among white and black Georgians as well.
Georgia is also hosting two Senate contests in the fall in which Democrats are in striking distance of flipping both Republican-held seats.
In the regular Senate election, while none of the competitors reach the state’s 50% threshold to avoid a runoff, GOP Sen. David Perdue registers 45% of the vote against Democrats Sarah Riggs Amico (42%), Teresa Tomlinson (44%), and Jon Ossoff (47%).
In the special election for appointed Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat, again, none of the rivals attract the 50% support needed to skip a runoff.
Loeffler’s campaign in the so-called jungle primary has been derailed by allegations she and her New York Stock Exchange chairman husband Jeffrey Sprecher made favorable trades after she received a private briefing warning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s replacement is unlikely to finish in the top two, with 12% of the vote compared with front-runner Rep. Doug Collins’s 34%.
Collins is the former top GOP lawmaker on the House Judiciary Committee and has represented Georgia’s north since 2013. Polling the congressman against the field of Democrats has him at 44% to Matt Lieberman’s 44%, 44% to Raphael Warnock’s 45%, and 45% to Ed Tarver’s 42%.
Should a Democrat win either Senate contest, the victory could change the chamber’s balance of power in Washington, D.C. Republicans currently have 53 senators in the Senate in contrast to 45 Democrats and two independents, who caucus with them.
Civiqs conducted the online panel poll from May 16-18. Researchers surveyed 1,339 respondents for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
